Definitely my mind went straight to The Lives of Others when I read the report. The Stasi were bad and America is good though, right? Well, that's what Diane Feinstein and Barack Obama basically said on the news yesterday. I was pretty ashamed of NPR yesterday. The timbre of their report about the surveillance was basically, "get used to it, anything goes for national security."
I'm so sorry to hear about the NPR bit. I stopped listening to All Things Considered years ago, for exactly those sorts of reasons. It's a dreadful situation, and ought to be one of those "the buck stops here" moments with the American public. Something is terribly wrong. The Tea Party, obviously, is not the answer. Nor is letting the military run rampant over American liberties.